A Taste for Life

For some people looking through old photograph albums transports them back into times long past: childhood days, school days, teen years, or even last year's family gathering. Pictures do it for me, too, but not as much as food!!

Tastes, flavors..............ah, there's the magic carpet that whisks me way, back to my first little house where my children were babies; back to northwest Washington, D.C. where my mothere reigned supreme in the little kitchen of the big corner house on New Hampshire Avenue where I spent many youthful years.

These days it takes very little to make me nostalgic. Everyone knows his or her exact location when certain historical events occurred - -when President Kennedy was assassinated, Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon, etc. For me, a variety of flavors recall what my children call the "olden days". One may remember where they were. I remember what I ate!!!

As the Jewish holidays approach, it is nice to look at the picturs of happy faces from the past. The video which exists in my head, however, never fades and can never be overplayed.............the kitchen table where twice yearly a hand-driven grinder was attached so that very soosn large pots of golden liquid were simmering on the stove, producing some of the best gefilte fish inthe world! The large wooden bowl (do they sell them anymore?) where the chicken livers were magically chopped into a delight that even made matzo taste good! Mom's matzo balls, which for many years justifiably got the name of "cannonballs", but were later replaced by light-as-air, fluffy confections (if you followed the box instructions carefully; and, of course, those sweet and succulent lukshen kugels, which yearly were provided by at least six cooks whose recipes were "the best".

In today's turbulent environment, it is good to look back to simpler times, where faith and family were paramount in our lives. May G-d bless our country and Israel, our spiritual homeland, with prosperity and peace in the coming New Year. L'shanah tovah tikvoteyvu.